Photo courtesy of goodreads.com
It’s “author appreciation” time again! Yay! This week I wanted to pay tribute to someone who I’ve always thought is extremely underrated in the world of books. I remember having a conversation with a friend that this novelist deserves every writing-related award to ever exist. His body of work is one of the highlights of my childhood/elementary/early high school years. He’s most well-known for authoring the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series (which has major motion pictures based on the first two books, and, most recently, a musical, which blows my mind) and The Kane Chronicles trilogy: Drum roll please…. It’s Rick Riordan!
I believe it was in grade 6 when a classmate read The Lightning Thief, the first title of the Percy Jackson & The Olympians, in less than 24 hours. (I miss the old days when I had the time to do that.) I wanted to understand the hype surrounding Rick Riordan’s books, so, naturally, I needed to take a look. Once I began reading, I became a huge fan almost instantaneously. The main reason why I really appreciated and continue to appreciate his work is that he’s able to write incredibly well from the perspective of young teens without the characters coming across as too cheesy or overexaggerated/filled with unnecessary, cliché, pubescent drama.
His books include just the right number of humorous and emotional elements in the action-packed novels. Wow. Writing this blog post has been quite nostalgic for me. I want to go back to 2010-2012!
But overall, I can’t stress enough how much Riordan has influenced my perspective/impacted how I read fiction even to this day – more so than any other author. Every time he announced when they would plan to release his latest book, I always felt super excited.
For more about Rick Riordan, you can check out his official website here: http://rickriordan.com/